fear

why we are so afraid of change

why we are so afraid of change

I met this girl once. She was severely depressed and had been for about 7 years. She’d lived in this story for so long that she couldn’t drum up energy or “want to” to do anything anymore – laundry, dishes, straightening the house, cleaning out clutter, even getting out of bed some days.

A variety of meds hadn’t helped. Changing her routine hadn’t helped. Counselors hadn’t helped. Getting a job hadn’t helped. She was flat-out STUCK!

When God crossed her path with mine, He whispered to me that grace COULD help! She and I chatted several times about how grace changes everything, and while she loved the hope I talked about, she was very skeptical. I understood why! She had tried so. many. things. And none had helped.

God prompted me to offer to help her dig out of the blech, and I was excited about giving her further hope and showing her how grace could change everything in her life. But, she said no.

I’ve often pondered why she refused. Maybe it was because she wasn’t truly desperate enough. Maybe it was because she was afraid of trying one more thing that might not work. Maybe it was because some other story kept her from accepting help. Or maybe, deep down, she was afraid of change.

Change Seems Scary

For most of us, change is scary. New homes, new jobs, new churches, new relationships – they’re all tinged with a certain amount of fear and uncertainty. We get used to our lives, and we’re comfortable here. That may sound crazy if you have a life  you don’t love or things that annoy and frustrate you. But the truth is, we crave familiar and cling to what we know and what we’re used to.

cheery girl with journal

So while most change seems scary, if we’re honest, the change that scares us most is change WITHIN us.

Why IS that?

I’ve come to believe inside change scares us the most because we fear that if we had to change, then something must’ve been wrong with us before. We were somehow messed up or broken or needed fixing, so we HAD to change. And that just doesn’t feel good. Who wants to believe they’re screwed up, much less have to carry around the guilt or the labels?

 Changing the Change Story

But what if all that guilt and being broken and “change is scary” is just another false story?

What if the truth is that we are NOT broken, wrong, or needing to be fixed?
(God tells us, as believers, that we’re not.)

What if change is simply a way to move toward MORE of something good?

What if the changes we make aren’t telling us something about our identity
so much as they’re helping us get what we want?

And what if we could reframe the old story into something
that serves us instead of scares us?

I think with a little story revision in our heads, we can turn change into a lovely thing in our lives. Something we WANT to have around. Something we begin to enjoy. Something we see as growth and healing and happiness. Something that lets us pursue more of what we want. Something that brings us MORE life!

That’s a story we’d be happier to live most any day, I bet.

change is good - gracethread Pin


Posted by Janna Wright in Discovering My True Identity, grace changes everything
when it’s okay to be full of warm apathy

when it’s okay to be full of warm apathy

An old friend and I recently reconnected around grace and during our musings, she reminded me of an important grace symptom: refusing to care what people think of us. 

After our chat I couldn’t stop thinking about this post, written a long time ago during my new-to-grace days.   Thank you, my grace friend, for the reminder of this important truth and the chance to walk down memory lane for a few minutes.

 

My Dear Reader,
I don’t care what you think. But actually, I do. That’s why I agonize over my blog posts until I’m almost sick of looking at them. It’s why I’m insecure every morning and night thinking that I’ll never write anything worthy of you reading. Or if you do manage to be duped into reading it, you’ll put it aside in disgust with a shake of the head and a tsk, tsk, because it really was mindless drivel anyway.

I don’t care what you think. But, I do. Continue reading →

Posted by Janna Wright in grace changes everything